The Little Rascals’ Christmas Special (1979)

              ‘Our Gang’ was a series of interconnected comedic shorts and one movie that was created by Hal Roach and ran from 1922 to 1944.  Originally made and distributed by Pathé Exchange, they moved to MGM in 1927.  Originally silent film they made the change to sound in 1929.  A total of forty-one child actors were rotated through, only one of which, Jackie Cooper, went on to have a lengthy career in the industry.  None of the child actors were ever given residuals.  Hal Roach sold the rights to MGM in 1938 and then bought back the shorts produced during his time there in 1949 but not the ‘Our Gang’ trademark itself or the shorts produced after he left.   He reedited and repackaged the shorts under the new name ‘The Little Rascals’ and reissued them to theaters starting in 1950.  In 1954 they were licensed for television and began to be shown in heavy rotation.  In response MGM did the same with the shorts they still owned and the two sets of shows competed in syndication for years.  If you’re above a certain age you still remember flipping the few channels you had on Sunday mornings in the early 80’s trying to find something that wasn’t ‘The Little Rascals’ or ‘The Three Stooges.’

              In 1963 Hal Roach Studios filed for bankruptcy and the rights were bought up by a syndication agent named Charles King, who used them as the basis for his burgeoning King World Productions.  This company would go on to become one of the largest syndication networks in the world, responsible for ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ and in 1985 they partnered with Buena Vista Television, better known as the tv arm of Disney, to distribute shows like ‘Siskel & Ebert’ and ‘Ducktales.’  They were eventually bought out by CBS and folded into CBS Media Ventures.

              In 1979 King World Productions hired the animation studio Murakami-Wolf-Swenson to produce a ‘Little Rascals’ Christmas special.  MWS had spent much of the 70’s making relatively niche, outsider animation such as the animated segments of Frank Zappa’s ‘200 Motels’ and ‘Down and Dirty Duck’ before stumbling into mainstream success with 1978’s ‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’  They would go on to produce several tv shows including ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ before folding in 1999.

              The directors of the special were Charles Swanson and Fred Wolf, two thirds of Murakami-Wolf-Swenson.  Charles Swanson is best known today as a creative producer on ‘Rugrats,’ and Fred Wolf is the man responsible for the “How many licks?” Tootsie Pop commercial.  It was written by Romeo Miller, who wrote most of the Rankin Bass Christmas specials.  The voice actors were the usual mix of industry veterans and child actors who left the industry when the roles dried up, the most interesting of which might be Robby Krieger as Porky, who would go on to play Patrick in ‘Monster Squad’ and Job in ‘Children of the Corn.’  In addition two of the original ‘Our Gang’ cast had voice roles in the special: Mathew Beard, who played Stymie from 1931 to 1935 had a small part as a butcher, and Darla Hood, who played Darla from 1936 to 1941, here played the mom to the main rascals we follow, Spanky and Porky.

              All of which explains what happened to bring this special into existence in 1979, but it doesn’t answer the more maddening question of why.  Why in the world was this brought into being then?  The syndication deals were still going strong, ‘Little Rascals’ merchandise was still selling relatively well, but there doesn’t seem to have been anything to explain this like the Raggedy Ann and Andy feature film justified its special.  If I had to take a guess maybe the runaway inflation of the late 70’s (it was over 13% in the year this cartoon came out) might have reminded people of the economic conditions of the Great Depression, but that seems like a stretch.

              For whatever reason they decided that this was the year to attempt to exploit their IP and so produced this special.  Whatever vague memories people have these days of the ‘Our Gang’ cast probably comes from either Eddie Murphy’s Buckwheat from Saturday Night Live or possibly the animated series that ran from 1982 to 1984.  There’s some character overlap between that series and this cartoon, namely Darla, Alfalfa, Porky, and Spanky.  The Christmas special also has Stymie.  Time seems to have whittled down which of the original forty-one characters got remembered to these five and maybe a few more.

              The cartoon revolves around Spanky, his little brother Porky, their mother, and their attempts to get each other gifts for Christmas.  It flirts with adapting O’Henry’s “Gifts of the Magi” but really doesn’t beyond the idea of people struggling to get each other presents for Christmas.   In this case Spanky and Pork overhear a telephone conversation and think their mother is getting them a very expensive toy train for Christmas when she’s actually confirming an order for her employer.  When the mom learns about this misunderstanding she can’t bring herself to disappoint them so returns the winter coat she’s saved up for to the store and instead buys them the train.  Because she no longer has a coat she comes down with a cold and the boys decide they should buy her one for Christmas, roping in the rest of the rascals to help.  While the gang is getting into cartoon shenanigans to raise the money the train is delivered and the boys discover what their mother did.  They decide to return the toy and exchange it for the coat but it gets stolen by some local boys.  Despite the loss they’re determined to raise the money some other way and still get her the coat.  While all this has been going on the characters keep running into a charity Santa who starts off the special burnt out and resentful of the kids and their Christmas wishes but as he sees the struggles the boys are going through for their mom his heart is touched.  He ends up buying the coat for the mom from his Christmas paycheck and makes the local boys return the train.  Everyone has a merry Christmas.

              It’s actually a very touching Christmas story and the happy ending feels earned.  The characters are not in a great place, financially, and you can tell they’re genuinely worried about money, which isn’t typical for specials like this.  The cartoon directly states it’s taking place during the Great Depression and the economic precarity of everyone is a constant presence.  The mom is always fretting about the cost of everything, the kids keeps telling each other that what they want for Christmas is too expensive, when they’re scheming up ways to make money they casually mention they plan on soaking the rich customers, all of this coupled with their wardrobes and the backgrounds it really does make you notice that it’s taking place during a time period we don’t often see depicted, especially in a cartoon.  I don’t really have much bad to say about this side of the special, it’s a decent story well told.  I especially like the gradual turn the Santa takes, from bored indifference a gradual appreciation for how much the kids love their mother.

              Unfortunately the rest of the special is pretty annoying.  I get that it’s for kids and they don’t have a lot of time to develop the characters so everyone is pretty one-note, but those notes are not that great.  Darla is oddly flirtatious, which is not a good look for a five year old, Alfalfa is given to constant malapropisms that weren’t funny the first time, and I’m sure Stymie has some characterization beyond ‘the normal one’ but it wasn’t apparent.  Most of the kid’s shenanigans are typical comedy stuff, like getting ingredients wrong when they try to bake something or trying to convince people it’s snowing when it’s not so they can shovel their driveways, but there are some fairly novel tweaks.  What they’re trying to bake is a plum pudding instead of something they’d make today and they try to fake the snow by using feathers from Alfalfa’s uncle’s chicken farm, which he’s been stockpiling to sell to the pillow factory.  Just little atypical touches that keeps reminding you it’s set in the 1930’s.  They’re all part of a club and hold regular meetings under a kind of kiddy Robert’s Rules of Order which I’m sure slayed theaters in 1932 but must have been odd in 1979 and plays even odder now.  While this all makes things interesting it does not make them funny.

              The animation is certainly not bad, the characters are pretty recognizable, if stylized.  Everyone has rounded edges with thick border lines and the backgrounds are either vague watercolors or rather simplified urban scenes.  It’s all very late-70’s in nature.  The voice actors all do a pretty good job and we all of the children are voiced by actual child actors, so I’ll take some swallowed words and halting line deliveries for them to sound authentic.  The adult actors all give good performances, I’ll give special note to Darla Hood as the mom and Jack Somack as Santa. 

              After airing on December 3, 1979 on NBC the special went into the usual holiday rotation.  It was given a VHS release although copies seem relatively rare, at the time of writing there are two for sale on Amazon, one for $3,399.95 and the other for $4,444.44.  Each charge just $3.99 for shipping.  It’s not available for streaming and per Wikipedia it’s last known broadcast was in 2009 on ABC Family, but as usual it does seem up on all of the usual services.  Murakami-Wolf-Swenson was not a third-rate outfit, they did quality work, and King World Productions was not a small company by this point and this was the property that made them.  It’s worth seeking out and seeing just once, if for no other reason than there are no talking animals or supernatural events, it’s just a nice, simple story with a happy ending for some nice people.  Sometimes that’s all you want for Christmas.